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Children on the Edge supporter, Ani Evans, did something special to celebrate her ‘big’ birthday and set up a Birthday Fundraiser on Facebook recently. She set a target of £500 - ‘£10 for every year of my life!’ she said.

Ani not only met her target, she absolutely smashed it, and has raised £741 so far - an amazing achievement. One that will make a huge difference to our work around the world with vulnerable children.

Ani has been a long standing supporter of Children on the Edge, and was involved with us back in 2010 through her work with The Body Shop At Home. She took part in a Playscheme in Moldova where she saw first hand how our donations are used to work with and support some of the worlds most vulnerable children. She said wanted her friends to donate as a way of celebrating her birthday with her, and said that our work “means a lot to her”.

Ani said: “The children I met in Moldova had very little and were at risk of being victims of child trafficking. Children on the Edge built a Centre which was where the Playscheme was run. It was an emotional trip and probably the most rewarding thing I have done in my life so far”.

Children on the Edge supported and protected children living in poverty and without adequate care in Moldova; using our Child Friendly Space model. Our 'Centre', (a converted house), served over 200 vulnerable children from the local rural community. Activities included: after school lessons and homework clubs, computer lessons and free play sessions, including arts, crafts, games and sports. The most vulnerable also received a daily nutritious meal.

In the years since the Centre was established we saw it become the hub of the community. Work with the children at the Centre reduced the crime rate and increased school attendance, helping to halt the cycle of poverty and vulnerability. We assisted our local partners to become an independent Moldovan run organisation, who took over running the centre using independent local funding. Read more about our current projects.

Ani said: "I have been blown away by the support I have had. It’s a long time since I did any fundraising, so I am over the moon that people were on board. The more people who know about Children on the Edge the better."

Our Fundraising Officer, Kerry said: “We want to thank Ani and her friends for their kindness and support, and of course wish Ani a huge Happy Birthday! We’re delighted she chose to remember Children on the Edge as she celebrated a big milestone".

The money Ani raised will help marginalised and forgotten children, who are living on the edge of their societies around the world. These are children without parental care, neglected or persecuted by their governments, ignored by international media and missed by large overseas agencies.

Children on the Edge work in partnership with local communities. We help create safe, child friendly environments and support children to realise their rights. All our work aims to restore the ingredients of a full childhood by generating hope, life, colour and fun.

We're taking a look back to our history, and will be sharing memories from our early work in the 1990's and early 2000's as part of a #ThrowbackThursday series.

Rachel Bentley, our International Director describes a memory from 1999 that makes her smile:

Children on the Edge were part of the effort to help refugees from Kosovo residing in Albania during the Kosovan conflict. The people we were helping were spread out across difficult terrain, scattered across different temporary camps. It was summer and the temperature was in the high 30’s often reaching 40 degrees.

The issue all of the organisations were facing in the camps was sanitation. To prevent the spread of disease in such a setting, a solution needed to be found so that the refugees could wash themselves. They were living in remote locations with no water or facilities. Also, it was important to not spend a lot of money on building expensive infrastructure within these camps as it was likely in a few months the refugees would return home to Kosovo.

We came up with the idea of mobile shower and sanitation units. The company, Elliott helped us make these to specification, they were towed by land rovers and visited each camp every two days.

Money was not wasted on expensive infrastructure and these mobile units followed the people back to Kosovo where they were used in the village of Cabra that was completely destroyed during the war. They provided washing facilities for the community as they literally rebuilt their lives from scratch.

Our mobile shower units, providing hot showers (with on tap Body Shop shower gel!) became famous within the refugee population and many a tale was told of them long after the crisis.

It’s one of my favourite memories (and in 26 years I have a lot!) because it’s a great example of an innovative, bespoke solution to a specific problem, thinking outside of the box. As a smaller, more agile charity we were able to move fast and still rely on that skill in all of our projects today.